Keeping Score: How a divided Brooklyn public school campus is trying to unite through sports

It's been a pivotal year at the John Jay Educational Campus.

Life inside this hulking red-brick building in Park Slope, Brooklyn is like a thumbnail sketch of New York City's largely segregated school system as a whole.

Each of its four floors houses a different high school. Millennium Brooklyn, one of the city’s selective schools, has many more white and Asian students than the other three. At Cyberarts Studio Academy, John Jay School for Law, and Park Slope Collegiate, the vast majority of students are Black and brown.

For more than a decade, Millennium students played on sports teams with peers from a sister school in Manhattan, where most students are also white and Asian. The three schools in the building with mostly Black and brown students played together on joint sports teams.

Sometimes, the Millennium Phoenixes and the John Jay Jayhawks faced off against each other – creating the kind of rivalry one might expect between schools in nearby towns – but in the same building, under one roof.

Then, during the pandemic, town hall meetings held over Zoom allowed parents and students from across the building to meet and talk, and adults heard about how many of the teens in the building felt about having separate teams with unequal access to sports. After years of activism by students and parents, administrators decided to merge all the building’s teams into one athletics program.

Some called it an integration.

Players threw away their old jerseys and put on new ones – this time as the John Jay Jaguars. They started rooting for each other.

WNYC partnered with the student journalism nonprofit The Bell to chronicle the effort through the eyes and ears of students on the girls varsity volleyball team and their classmates across the building.

The journey has been bumpy, as students and coaches endeavored to overcome decades of divisive education policies, unite the schools, and win.

Here are their reflections on the season and the broader fight to overcome segregation in New York City public schools.

For more about their experience, listen to WNYC’s new podcast, Keeping Score.

These quotes have been lightly edited for clarity.

Kali Moore

Year: Senior

School: Park Slope Collegiate

Role: Co-Captain and outside hitter on the volleyball team

“Two years ago, just by being predominantly Black and doing so well in a pool of predominantly white volleyball girls, we felt like we were fighting back against racism just by winning and presenting ourselves and just doing well.

But now we have a different goal: Our goal is to try and be as diverse as possible, as inclusive as possible. And I think we're so new right now. And by having those conversations, we're getting closer to that goal every day.”

Mariah Morgan

Year: Junior

School: Park Slope Collegiate

Role: Student journalist with The Bell; Setter on the Jaguars’ volleyball team

“We can see the blatant inequities in society on our campus and with the sports teams. I think the campuses have been separated for too long. And I think a more unified campus is probably a good thing.

But there are moments where, I'm going to be honest, I just don't know how we're going to make it work. I believe in it, my family believes in it. I want other Black and brown kids to believe in it, too.”

Lauren Valme

Year: Junior

School: Park Slope Collegiate

Role: Student journalist with The Bell; Middle on the volleyball team

“The big problems [in the] world play out in the schools. We still have a long way to go, but we made it a long way. And it definitely opened up my eyes to how much change I can make in a very short amount of time.”

Coach Mike Salak

School: Park Slope Collegiate

Role: Girls varsity volleyball head coach; economics teacher

“I put a picture on the wall of them during our first scrimmage. And, you know, it was all of them sitting on the bleachers and it was like all the John Jay girls next to each other. Then it was all the Millennium girls. So it was like, we're not mixed yet, right? This is kind of a symbol of where we need to go.”

Noor Muhsin

Year: Junior

School: Millennium Brooklyn

Role: Student journalist with The Bell

“There has to be some connection and some interaction [between the schools] and slowly more and more of the kids I talked to are starting to see that.

Now that I can interview them, I feel like I'm helping open up the conversation a little more.

I am happy I'm in the school, but now I'm in the mindset of like, okay, well, what can be better?”

Renika Jack

Year: Senior

School: Cyberarts Studio Academy

Role: Student journalist with The Bell

“New York has [a] segregated school system.

We could talk, we could lose our voices, we could scream, we could kick down doors. But at the end of the day, us students, we only have so much power. It takes the people in higher positions.

We can only be so hopeful.”

Reminder to listen to or subscribe to “Keeping Score” here.